The Magnificent Seven Billion
by Ross Elliot
Oh, and how they floated there. Two hundred & twenty miles above the Earth in their spaceship.
We. Our guys. Us.
Shuttle Discovery performs a majestic back flip at 18,000 miles per hour and comes in to dock alongside the space station with nary a jolt. An orbital tango. Twinkling stars and twinkling toes. Fred Astaire in a spacesuit. Perfect.
The hatch opens and through they float. The Magnificent Seven. John Sturges, eat your heart out.
Can you imagine, a scant hundred years ago, in 1905, our ancestors even conjuring up such a scenario? No. Yet there it is. There we are.
The heroism, the adherence to objectivity, the breathtaking concentration of wealth and the focusing thereof: these things make it possible. They make it real.
Seven million pounds of thrust hurls them upward faster than a speeding bullet. Their journey is fraught with peril. It must be, for Man dares to break free of his home. We, who were once helpless babes, decipher and render nature's power to our own ends, and with supreme confidence in our own destiny, thrust starward.
And, while men on Earth play with their own DNA, Man above toys with the heavens. We burn the candle at both ends and oh! how brightly it burns.
There need never be an end to this. The market, the satisfaction of needs and wants, the mind-blowing accumulation and exploitation of capital, the dreaming, the searching and the attainment.
Everything is possible.
Man is capable and Man is good.
Just get out of his way.
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